


Wings of Paternity

by OhLawdHeComin



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Unreliable Narrator, Vanilla Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21920590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhLawdHeComin/pseuds/OhLawdHeComin
Summary: A totally not canon AU about a joke I make with my friends when we play Smash Bros.Joker's dad is having a lot of anxiety with his son being on probation. Could it possibly explain his odd recurring dreams?
Comments: 5
Kudos: 56





	1. Entry 1

My wife has become sick of my murmurings of my odd dreams lately, so she gave me this journal so I can write about them instead of blabbering it to her all the time. I love the woman very much, so I suppose it is in her best interest if I put my thoughts here.

The dreams began a few weeks ago, not long after the state arrested my son and requested he be put under probation. As much as it pained me to send him away, we didn’t have much choice in the matter. His school gave us a call and informed us that he would no longer be permitted to attend following his actions. With no other school for miles and us feeling unconfident in our ability to give him quality education of our own, we decided it would be best for him to attend school somewhere else in the country. But who could we trust to take care of our boy? It was very hard finding an arrangement for him. Our relatives were either unable to take in our son with their own situations, or the schools near them refused to allow him to enroll. It was looking very bleak, until I phoned my old chum from high school. While he couldn’t take my son in, he said he knew a guy who might be willing. He introduced us to this man, a coffee shop owner from Tokyo named Sojiro Sakura. My friend got Sakura-san in contact with me, and we hit it off very well. While I would much rather have a relative watch our boy, I felt like I could trust him, especially with our options being very limited. By a great stroke of fortune, the local school was also willing to enroll him. Even with everything set up, I still felt a great deal of sorrow for my son. He may have hurt that poor man, but I felt something was off. He cried to me that he didn’t do anything to purposely hurt him, and that he was only trying to save the woman with him. Part of me thought he was just lying to get out of trouble, but doubt sat in the depths of my mind. I wondered if I was truly doing the right thing. Even worse was that the government forbade us from contacting him while he was under his probation. They reasoned that our son’s behavior may have been due in part to bad parenting, so they wanted us to have as little influence on him as possible when he was away. It’s truly awful, and it’s even worse that the government now sees us as untrustworthy. On the day he left, I tried to spend as much time as possible with him, loading every piece of fatherly advice I could bestow upon him, seeing as he wouldn’t be able to hear any of it for a year. He looked dejected during the whole thing, which was perfectly understandable, but extra heartbreaking for me. Since I saw the subway doors close in front of him as he headed into the unseen distance, he has been the subject of my every thought. I can’t know what he’s been thinking or what exactly he’s been up to. Sometimes I’ve been able to vicariously know through sporadic calls with Sakura-san, but it’s stressing to not be able to hear it from my boy himself. My wife theorizes that my odd dreams all come from this stress, and that I should relax because our boy is certainly doing fine.

Speaking of the dreams, it’s about time I start documenting them here. There are many details I remember in lucid detail, and some I hardly remember, but I will do my best to recall them. The first dream happened one dreary afternoon. I had became very drowsy all of a sudden. Perhaps I was exhausted from last night’s work. I do late night shifts after all. I had dozed off into a nap. When my mental acuity returned, I was in some sort of cell. I was pinned up against a wall by two men in armor-no, it wasn’t exactly me. Somehow I knew it was not I, but my son who was pinned, and I was just viewing the scene from his perspective. Across the room was another armored man standing above a boy on the ground, weapon in hand and ready to end the young man’s life. Beside him was a man wearing a crown, cape, and not much else. It seemed he was the one ordering the armored men. Any moment and he would give the command to kill the boy. Horrified, I shouted out to my son. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I recall it being under the lines of telling him to stand up for himself and save the boy. I then thought of how he claimed to us and in court that he saved the woman testifying against him. If he really was telling the truth, then perhaps he could save one more person. I could tell something clicked within him, as if he realized my presence. He then began to struggle and quiver. Shortly after, my perspective suddenly changed. No longer was I viewing the event as him, but behind him. I saw he wore an outfit I never recall him having. Did he perhaps go clothes shopping when he got to Tokyo? He looked at me, tears in his eyes. He said weeping, “I don’t want to die…” Then, the caped man stared at us in confusion. He called for his guards to attack us. Their suits of armor burst, revealing two strange pumpkin monsters. They charged at my son. Determined to protect him, I raised my arm, and a blast of red energy hit one of the monsters, significantly injuring it. I didn’t think much of it during the dream, but it seems odd how nonchalant I was about it in retrospect. I then cried out to him to do something. He pulled out a knife and slashed the monster I attacked multiple times until it exploded into a black mist. I of course didn’t think much as to why my boy had a knife, but as I said before I didn’t question much then. We then took out the other monster together. 

The rest of that dream is mostly a blur. I do remember running through a castle with the boy who was in the cell, as well as a weird looking cat, both of who would becoming recurring characters in my dreams. We fought some more monsters together alongside the cat. After that, I hardly remember anything at all. Then, I woke up in cold sweat. I heard the front door open. My wife had just come home from her day shift. I relayed to her my dream. She looked at me with eyes of concern. She’s no psychologist, but she could tell my anxieties about my son had dominated my mind and were taking over even in my sleep. She told me to take it easy, and she fixed me a cup of my favorite tea.


	2. Serene Nightmare

The days in which I have those dreams are quite inconsistent. Sometimes I’ll have them multiple days in a row, sometimes the dreams come intermediately, and other times I’ll have none at all for a long span of time. However, they strangely always happen in the later afternoon. On days I have them, I get tired around that time and I yearn greatly for a nap. After a few days of dreaming, I have grown prepared to expect them, and the moment I first yawn I head for my bedroom to sleep.

A majority of the dreams are essentially the same: my son and I, alongside a few others, run around strange places and take out monsters. Speaking of ‘few others’, there’s another character in my dreams I have neglected to mention. Among the group is a girl with big bushy pigtails. I don’t know what her face looks like, but the hair is standout enough to burn a memory of her in my mind. She gets me thinking how fast my boy is nearing manhood. I hope he can find a woman as lovely as her to one day be his wife. I don’t look forward to the future that much, but among the coming days I anticipate are the day of my son’s wedding and the day I become a grandfather. My boy is quite good with kids, and I think he’ll make a great father.

Tangent aside, there are a few dreams that stick out from the routine formula. There was one in particular that I distinctly remember for deviating from this. The dreams before then were in that castle I mentioned earlier, but then I was somewhere different. I was in some sort of prison. The castle had prisons as well, but none of them had soft-looking blue cushions that climbed up the walls. In another room, I heard people speaking. I could make out the words “execute” and “execution”. Somehow I knew that they were talking about me. I was going to be put to death. For some reason, I wasn’t afraid. It was then I heard footsteps coming to my location, becoming louder and louder. A young girl came up to me. She wore an officer’s uniform of some sort. On her face was an eyepatch. I internally winced. What violent event had transpired that led to this girl needing to cover her eye like that? “Hey, you!” she shouted at me. “It’s time for your execution!” She grabbed my arm and pulled, dragging me through the halls of the jail. She was shockingly strong for a girl so small. “Is he here?” I asked her. She stopped in her place, as if she was surprised by what I said. “Yeah, but what does it matter? You’ll be a goner in a few moments anyway!” She then resumed walking. “May I see him?” I requested. She clearly was frustrated at my plea, but she relented. “Fine! But make it quick!” She pulled me into a circular room. “The inmate is in that cell over there.” She pointed to a lonesome cell, where, surely enough, my boy was in. He was standing by its door, hands held firmly on the bars. He noticed I had entered, and was looking at me. I approached him. I spoke as calmly as I could, trying to downplay my departure in that I would surely see him again, but my son still looked perturbed. After my short farewell speech, the girl beckoned me to the other side of the room. Sitting there were two classic French guillotines, sharp and ready to sever my head from my body. Another girl entered the room. She looked very similar to the girl who dragged me in, although her hair was in a long braid, whereas my girl had side buns comparable to a princess from a famous American film. She had also dragged in someone: a fairy monster I recognized as being among those my son had fought. The girl with the braid threw a large cloth over me, obscuring my vision. I then felt myself being wrapped in something long and heavy. It felt like some sort of cool metal, perhaps a chain. I was then grabbed by someone. I was forced into a kneeling position, and I assumed I was being placed into the guillotine. I heard the two blades slide down the frame, and then everything went dark.

But I didn’t wake up just yet.

I could still make out voices.

At first they were incredibly hard to make out, but they slowly became clearer.

_“…can I get him back?”_

_“You’re so ungrateful! Our master gives you a gift and you immediately want a refund?”_

_“Regardless, it is indeed something we can do. With the compendium, you can-“_

The voices fuzzed out again for a moment, but quickly came back to being audible.

_“-but it will cost a sum of money.”_

_“Here’s everything I have. Can you do it with this much?”_

_“That looks about right. I’ll give you back your change.”_

I then awoke again in the same room, but I felt a bit weak, like if I let myself go after a long period of habitual exercise, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t shake off quickly. My son was smiling. I heard him mutter,

“I’m never letting go of you again.”

The rest of the dream was pretty par for the course, that being running around and fighting monsters. It’s strange how formulaic the dreams have become, and how few truly bizarre moments there are that I can easily recall.

At least so far.


	3. A Merged Identity

My, it has been a long time since my last entry, hasn’t it? However, I wouldn’t say the hiatus matters much. After the bizarre guillotine dream, things returned to their formulaic nature. However, sometimes the dreams slightly change from time to time. This mostly comes in the form of a change of setting. The first set of dreams took place in that castle, but after a while the castle was gone and my boy and his dreamland friends were running around a museum instead, walls adorned with paintings that stirred like they were made of some kind of liquid. And after another interval of time, the setting would change again. My dreams have taken me to banks, Egyptian pyramids, sci-fi space stations, and as of most recently, a luxurious casino. New recurring characters have shown up as well. There’s a samurai boy with a kitsune mask, a girl who drives around on a flaming blue motorcycle, a girl who pilots an alien UFO, a girl donning a feather hat, and a boy dressed like a fairytale prince. Even still, the dreams haven’t evolved beyond that.

Except for yesterday’s dream.

To put it into perspective, I am currently writing this in November. According to my journal, the last significant dream that deviated from the norm was in April. Why did it take so long for things to be worth writing about? Who knows. What I do know is that yesterday’s dream has been the strangest yet by far. It began as typical. Me and my son were running about as usual. I was viewing the dream from his perspective at first. Oh, I have neglected to mention this in any capacity: my point of view in the dreams is always shifting. Sometimes I view the dream from his eyes, like how I did at the start of my first dream. Other times I am my own entity and standing beside him, which usually happens when monsters show up to attack my son and his friends. Anyway, I was seeing the dream from my son’s view, when I suddenly shifted perspective to that of my own. I decided to give him a pep talk. Standing in front of us was a large bull-like monster. I gave him some words of encouragement, then we beat it together. “Well done, my boy,” I said. “Thanks, Arsène,” He replied. _“Who’s Arsène?”_ I thought, confused as to why I would be called that. Was it some new teen slang I was unaware of? “Say, Arsène, something about you seems oddly familiar…” my son pondered. “Maybe it’s your speaking mannerisms? The way you talk sometimes just gives me a sense of déjà vu…” “I find it hard to believe that I remind you of anyone else,” I responded. “Why, it’s not like you haven’t known me since you were born!” My boy chuckled. “Oh come on, I get you’re supposed to be me and everything but…” he suddenly froze. His eyes widened. “Known me… you… but how?” he struggled to say. “Did somehow… my perception of my own dad leak into my self-image? Is that why you talk like him?” I was even more confused. “Wait, you’re meaning to tell me you think I’m someone else?” I asked. “Geez, you even think you’re him,” he groaned.

There were sounds of some sort of crowd in the distance, possibly from outside.

“Shoot, they’re really coming in now, we gotta go,” he said. “I’ll have to ask the twins about this later. They might have an explanation for it.”  
We then began a chase that felt like it was straight out of an action movie. Unfortunately, it didn’t have a happy ending, as my boy was ultimately caught by the men who were after him. After I woke up from the dream, I felt a small panic before coming to the realization that it was just another dream and that my real son was in no actual danger. I had no logical reason to worry, but something felt off, like perhaps my anxiety was somehow justifiable… Strange.


	4. Sacrifice

I think it’s safe to say it’s all over now.

I’m now a whole week dream free.

It happened at a time I would least expect it, too.

On Christmas Day, I got a phone call from a woman. She said my son was currently being held in a juvenile detention center.

I was horrified to say the least. How did my boy get in trouble again? I assumed the silence for the past months meant that things were going very well, but that was unfortunately not the case.

The woman told me he had turned himself in, claiming he was the “Phantom Thief” that’s been all over the news lately.

 _“Preposterous!”_ I thought. Why would my son claim to be that aimless, nameless, vigilante?

The woman was able to swiftly answer my question. She said it was a ploy to focus the trial of Masayoshi Shido away from the Phantom Thieves since, as it turns out, the man who sued my boy was the very prime minister candidate himself!

I don’t follow politics very much. Honestly, the only time I ever put any attention into it is when Election Day rolls around, to which I conduct some brief research before I head to the polls. Despite this, even I have heard about Mr. Shido, a current cabinet member who has seen an explosion in popularity as of late. I still find it hard to believe that such a nationally-known man is responsible for my family’s current predicament, but with what has happened in my life as of late, little surprises me anymore.

The woman assured me that she and others were making an active effort to get him out of detention once he served as a witness in Shido’s trial. Even with all her promises, I still felt incredibly stressed. The thought of my son locked up and alone was immensely worrying.

If anything, my apprehensive mind was in the perfect condition for vivid, fantastical dreams, but the exact opposite has happened. My sleep is blank. I no longer get tired in the middle of the day. It appears the adventures in dreamland are officially over. It’s bone-chilling to think about what a perfect coincidence it was that the very next day after the final dream was the day that my reality of a peaceful prohibition for my son was shattered.

On a side note, the final dream was very eventful. It took place in a very unique setting: we were in downtown Tokyo, running on massive bone structures that interwove themselves with the cityscape. It was like being in a heavy metal album cover. We fought monsters as we climbed up the great skeletal system, and at the top we faced a giant robot-like thing that had folded itself into a big golden cup. It struck us with all kinds of strange gizmos, but my boy and his friends were able to come out on top.

That’s what it first seemed at least, but then the robot struck them with a powerful surprise attack that threw them all onto the ground. It looked like we were done for, but cheers from below us began sounding from below. It gave my son the strength to slowly crawl up.

However, just the ability to stand up was very useless on its own. There would be nothing stopping the robot from just knocking him over again.

“They all believe in me…” I heard my boy think. “But their support alone won’t help, not while this false idol stands against us…”

I tried to reach out to him, and he quickly noticed me.

“Arsené…” he muttered. “No. Dad. I love you to death, but I don’t think you’d be of much assistance here. It’s just too strong…”

“Hmh, good to see you finally acknowledge who I am,” I replied. “But you’re very correct. I’m just your father. What else can I do? Tell him to go to his room?”

“Wait, room… imprisonment… prison… chain…” my son was having a wild train of thought. “I know! Those chains that always surround you! They’ve probably got a whole lot of potential energy in them, so if I could break them, there would be a big energy burst, strong enough to signal a powerful shadow that I could use as a Persona! But that would probably mean I’d lose you in the process…”

“Oh don’t fret, boy,” I consoled him. “You couldn’t actually hurt me. This is all just a dream, after all!”

A bewildered look crossed my son’s face. “Wait, what do you mean this is a dream? What kind of Persona thinks he isn’t real? All my friends get consistent Personas, but of course mine has to be the weird one… whatever. None of that matters right now.”

“So you’re saying I’m going to be some sort of beacon?” I inquired. “For what? What could possibly be strong enough to beat, well, _that_?”

My son slyly smiled. “Well, I had an idea. This thing might just be a putrid conglomeration of the public’s collective sloth, but it really likes to roleplay like it's some god, one to be worshiped like the capital G. But let me tell you, he’s far from that. Perhaps a shadow that resembles the devil himself will do!”

“The devil?” I reacted. “But why?”

“It will be the ultimate test!” he explained. “The powers of sin and darkness are nothing to the real God. To him, even Satan is but a joke doomed to fall on the destined day. If this monstrosity wants to play God, then he’d be able to take down something under that caliber with ease. But as we know, that won’t be the case. He will be faced with the same sin that he is, and it will be his downfall!”

What a moving speech. I don’t ever recall him being able to speak so eloquently. Perhaps he’s been taking lessons?

“Very well,” I responded. “Tear the chains.”

He nodded. I appeared aside him. He grabbed ahold of the chains encircling me and pulled hard. If this were real life, it would have felt like I was being painfully pulled apart. There was an eruption of light coming from me. The dream began to fade, and I awoke.


	5. An Extra Page

Even though not much has been happening, there’s still plenty of pages left in this journal, and it would be a shame to put all this extra paper to waste, so I suppose I’ll jot down a few things here and there when they come to my mind.

Yesterday, my son finally came home. It wasn’t just him, but his whole friend group that he met during his time in Tokyo. I was first notified that our little homecoming party would be a bit larger than anticipated when my boy sent me a text message. It had read:

_“We’re going to arrive a bit later than expected. Me and my friends are sightseeing and taking the long road. They’ll be with me when I get back, so could you have dinner ready for them when they get there? I imagine it’ll be pretty late by then.”_

I talked it over with the missus, and she was more than happy to accommodate them. Later that night, he finally arrived. When he said that he’d be bringing some friends, I expected two, maybe three, so imagine my surprise when six additional people entered our humble home! My son was never a social butterfly, making the situation all the more unexpected. They each introduced themselves to me, but for some reason, I felt like I had seen them before. I knew it was impossible, but I just couldn’t shake off the feeling. Aside from the six people, my son had brought home a seventh friend: a black cat with a white muzzle. He said his name was Morgana, a street cat who started living with my boy back in Tokyo. He asked if I could let the cat stay with us, which I gladly agreed to. We spent the rest of the night catching up with each other's lives, as well as getting to know his friends. As it got late, they had to start heading back if they wanted to be home at a somewhat reasonable hour. With that, they made their heartfelt goodbyes. They all got quite emotional, which even rubbed off on me a bit. It made me very happy to see that my son had made such valuable connections that saying goodbye was that painful. They of course immediately wondered when they’d be able to see each other again, so we worked out plans to have my son visit them next summer break. After they left, everything had returned to the status quo, and it was time for me to be a father again. My boy got himself ready for bed, and before officially calling it a night, he told me that he wanted to speak with me. We sat in his room and talked for a while. 

“Thank you for everything,” he said.

I was confused. “Uh, thank you for what?”

After hearing me say that, he looked a bit disappointed for some reason. “Well, for… believing me I guess. You know I could have purposely hurt Mr. Shido, even when everyone thought I was full of crap for saying I didn’t do it. In a way, you were always by my side, even when you weren’t there. You gave me strength to carry on.”

“Really?” I replied. “Well, I’m glad I was able to help…somehow.”

He nervously smiled. “I guess I should get to bed now…if I don’t, then Morgana will be meowing my ear off.”

“The little fella is a good bedtime enforcer, eh?” I chuckled. “I suppose I made the right choice letting him stay here then! Well, goodnight!”

I then left the room and shut the door, giving my son the quiet he needed to finally get some shut-eye.

* * *

Well, summer vacation has come and my son has gone to see his friends, just as we promised.

That’s all fine and good, but something has changed.

Those dreams that I was sure were long gone…

…they’ve come back.


End file.
